Well this is an unofficial ride report as its my first ride and I can hrdly remember the names I've spoken to the people on the ride and make them aware of the forum so we might see some activity

Anyway, alarm goes off at 5:00am, thats tragic but we need to get away early to avoid the heat. 10 riders met at the Undoolya round-about on the east side of town and we decided to do the Larapinta loop, think thats 40km or so, I couldnt tell as the stupid Garmin 305 kept turning off. I think its going in the bin and a 705 will replace !!

We rode out Larapinta drive to Simpsons Gap and then left into Ilparpa rd where the word went around that we were going to do some good efforts....ok, this was going to be interesting Here I am with a damn Camelbak on, Ayup lights and on the heavy Scott while I'm surounded by some really nice carbon bikes So the message was, paceline, 1 minute intervals and try to hang on....We got down to 6 I think relatively quickly and believe it or not there is a rise 1/2 way along the 10km section that I thought we could drop some people on Well Tim and Rob (the two A graders) sucked my wheel up the rise and as the pace quickened the Camelbak started to give me the poo poos . 3 of us left just winding up the speed, things were starting to hurt but I jsut couldnt show any weakness, they weren't going to break the new kid in town The 3 of us made it to the Stuart Highway and waited for the rest of the bunch to catch us and then rode out to the Airport and back towards town ... A few of us turned right down the Ross River Hwy and rode into some seriously amazing country side. The West Macdonald ranges are absolutely spectacular to see and best of all no cars on the road

We dropped to 3 riders and turned around at a point I cant recall, once back into Alice we had covered just over 100km Now that was worth getting out of bed for So I had a chance to meet some really great people, there is no better way to get involved in a new town than through cycling Appears that I'll be joining the "road sub-committee" when I return next year and will help out with some Crit/Road race stuff.

Some excellent riding comming up in the new year, we've got the 500km ride to Kings Canyon in Autumn, Anaconda 100 MTB ride and the Tennant Creek races where we go up there to take on Mt Isa. Looks like I'll be starting work late on Tuesdays, some very good riding up north out of town where we go up and down some hills close to town and excellent coffee afterwards

I must say I miss the Lifecycles people heaps and those dastardly M7 Footpath Racers but I've found that cycling help you integrate well into new places.

Its a good ride Zozza, one thing thats really different is you cant really coast, stuff all time to recover so if they keep attacking you then you might be best off to let them go past and sit on their wheel a bit to recover.

I can really appreciate now why they call Time Trialing the "Race of Truth"...I'll be back with the Carbon Bling next year to see what I can do and leave the darn Camelbak at home !!!

AYUPs are awesome, infact they are jsut downright impressive !! Not used the ones on the helmet as yet, thats for some time in the future. Guys here jsut love the MTB riding, there are just so many tracks, I'll make a KMZ file available so you can see where they go.

Yes the road is coarse and the SCOTT did rattle a bit, it did make noises before but more now I did notice that the other guys carbon bikes weren't that noisy so see how it goes. No red dust in the drivetrain unless MTB, the roads are pretty clear, every now and then you'll come across a bunch of glass where someone has partied out on the road :-

Overall it aint footpath racing but its prety cool

Dont think I'll grab pictures this time round but when I get settled out here I'll started building a gallery of places to go and things to do...

Mike, had a look at the Alice Springs temp records for the last 2 years, min temp will be -7c Had a chat to one of the other guys that rides in, reckons he had about 100ml of water left in his bottle and it froze during the ride..

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